Abbie, Bud and Zabe

The last thing I do at night is watch my DVR'd Channel 4 News.  Can be a tough way to end the day, but it's so routine that I just do it.  Many times Don Shelby's In The Know confuses the heck out of me, last nights was very good.  Minneapolis has had only 2 murders in 2008, but they are both such sad, sad stories. Read Below.  I'll post something a little happier later, but if you missed last nights V-Day Supper Disaster just scroll down and catch yourself a laugh.

In The Know: Less Murder, But Helpless Victims

 
Don Shelby

(WCCO) Minneapolis has had only two homicides so far this year. For a town that was once called "Murderapolis" that's very good news. But Don Shelby says after reviewing the two murders, he doesn't feel much like celebrating.

From what I can tell the criminals have taken a few months off in their incessant efforts to kill each other. Police clear the vast majority of murder cases by arrest and prosecution.
That will be the case in the first two murders of the year, and so we ought to feel some sense of relief.
But, I'm not relieved because the victims of the two killings we've reported this week were a 4-year-old boy, beaten beyond recognition, and a 70-year-old woman, stabbed to death in her home. Maybe I am not sensitive enough to the loss suffered when two drug dealers gun each other down. But when the victims of murder are children or senior citizens, it gets my blood up, and I'm not likely to feel good about the advertised low crime rate.
John Donne once, famously wrote, "Every man's death diminishes me."
If he had to report the murder of a 4-year old and a 70-year-old in the same week, he might have used the word "heartbreaking."